Alien Days Anthology

by P P Corcoran

  A PRECAUTIONARY COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIES FOR PLANETARY BIO/GENOCIDAL STERILIZATION

  PROJECT OVERVIEW

  This project proposes to identify threat vectors that invading xenosapients might use in a campaign of pre-colonizing bio- or genocide. Although no evidence of xenosapience has been recorded, contemporary social factors make such a study both pertinent and prudent.

  Since the Great Renunciation of 308 years ago, the related environmental decision to decrease our presence in, and use of, space has achieved its stated goals of reducing our debris-intensive encroachment upon the pristine exoatmospheric environment. An inevitable consequence of this laudably eco-conscious initiative is a proportionally decreased capability for advanced detection or intercept of potential intruders. With any potential warning interval thus shortened, it behooves us to consider—in advance—what forms of attack are likely to be mounted by aggressors, particularly those who might employ “preemptive sterilization” prior to taking possession of new worlds. By identifying and modeling these “threat vectors”, we may be able to pre-craft defenses that achieve the dual purposes of frustrating such attacks while also minimizing the loss of life on both sides.

  This latter criterion, implicit in the universal pacifist mandate of the Great Renunciation, is one of the key motivations of, and explanations for, the highly speculative nature of this project. Experience has shown that unanticipated conflicts pose serious challenges to violence mitigation techniques, usually because there is insufficient time to adapt them to the specific challenges of the crisis at hand. Given the scope of destruction presumed by this project, advance planning becomes not only advisable, but ethically imperative. To do any less is to undermine both our odds of survival and our ability to minimize the damage we might inflict upon any potential aggressors.

  Dan blinked, shocked, not having read the earnest (and awkward) doctoral-candidate prose in almost a decade. Had he ever really believed that the senior Academics who decided his fate could see past the horrors of blood and war that his investigation invoked, that they would be able to glimpse the scientific and moral practicalities that lurked behind it? Did he himself really see that anymore—-or was it just something he believed he had seen, like a hallucination of youth that age magically promotes to the status of a genuine “memory?” He skipped much of the careful, carping diction with which he had made his obeisant bows to innumerable cultural shibboleths, and reached that section where he had committed the cardinal sin: to think like the monsters he had invented, to adopt the mentality and objectives of the threat force in order to predict and understand them. His careful contextualization’s-—that this was the necessary prelude to designing effective and merciful responses-—had been completely ignored or had gone unnoticed. He had been surprised at that, back then: now, he was surprised he could have ever been so gullible to hope, much less expect, otherwise. He read his thumbnail sketches of Apocalypse, couched in the layman’s prose that had been optimally congenial to the non-scientists on the review board . . .

  SELECTED ATTACK METHODOLOGIES: (In ascending order of likelihood)

  MATERIALIZATION OF MATTER WITHIN PLANETARY OR STELLAR SPHERES

  Agency: A fundament of quantum physics is that various subatomic particles do not transit actual space during changes in energy states, but disappear from their first location, and reappear in their new, probabilistically predicted second location. A weapon which could accelerate a large, dense shower of these high-energy subatomic particles (e.g. mesons) out of normal space-time so that they would then reliably re-express within the target body of either a planet or star would have utterly devastating results. Planetary core disruption could lead to catastrophic seismic events and sudden tectonic deformation; stellar core disruption could result in massive flare(s), a sharply increased radiation hazard, possibly complete stellar destabilization.

  ADVANTAGE:

  • Defender interdiction of the weapon effect is highly improbable, since the attacker’s offensive energy does not transit the intervening expanse of space-normal.

  DISADVANTAGE:

  • Scalability of effects unreliable, due to uncommon complexity of variables; therefore, this is a preferred attack method only if the aggressor is willing to accept complete annihilation of planetary (or system) resources.

  PRE-ACCELERATED KINETIC BOMBARDMENT.

  Agency: Massive solids accelerated to high, even near-relativistic velocities, may be launched to impact the target planet. Attacks by relatively low-mass /high velocity objects have a number of distinct advantages, making this the probable preferred variant. High speed objects will be virtually impossible to intercept or even detect (if they are traveling at near-relativistic speeds). Also, higher impact velocity is likely to reduce atmospheric ablation (and premature fragmentation) of the accelerated object, and also reduce susceptibility to atmospheric deflection.

  Aggressors conducting such an attack would probably commence their acceleration of the object in the trans stellar planetoid belt that extends as far as one light year beyond the heliopause. This great remove makes their preparatory activities almost completely undetectable; it is also unreachable by any of our current technologies. Careful charting of a clear acceleration track through this planetoid field, and then the system itself, is a prerequisite for mounting such attacks: therefore, detection of the aggressor’s preparatory survey activities might be the only means of acquiring advance warning.

  ADVANTAGES:

  • Very high ratio of destruction: cost, due to simplicity of acceleration, repeatability, and use of cheap, indigenous resources;

  • Some scalability of effects, if a sequence of smaller objects is used, with post-strike determinations of whether additional attacks are required.

  DISADVANTAGES:

  • Imprecise control over planetary impact points, due to difficulty of long-range precision and limited options for terminal vector correction;

  • Considerable lag time between commencement of offensive operations (charting, observation, and acceleration) and actual completion of attack (impact).

  DEADFALL KINETIC BOMBARDMENT

  Agency: Massive solids released on planetary reentry trajectories without significant prior acceleration. Although impact sites could be infrastructure targets (cities, defense facilities, power generation centers, transport and communication nexi ), a maximally destructive target list would call for a mix of tidal flat, deep-water, and polar ice-shelf strikes in order to facilitate widespread coastal inundation, rain, flooding, and consequent infrastructure and crop failures. Another, but more destructive approach would involve deep penetrations of the planetary mantle, with consequent ejections of dust into the high atmosphere, triggering a nuclear winter.

  ADVANTAGES:

  • Some scalability of effects (destabilization of biosphere may range from null to severe, but is controllable by varying the number of attacks and their impact points);

  • Minimal delay between commencement of operations and practical access to indigenous resources.

  DISADVANTAGES:

  • Uncontested access to orbital bombardment points must be secured, possibly requiring conventional (and expensive) military operations;

  • Low probability of complete extermination predicts a post-strike insurgency by survivors.

  TAILORED BIO-/GENOCIDAL MICROORGANISM

  Agency: Options range from long-duration agents (e.g.; a sleeper virus which renders all offspring sterile) to fast-acting, broad-spectrum ecocidals (e.g.; an aggressive and non-selective reducing bacterium). The latter would logically be geneered to be hardy, rapidly self-replicating with a high mutational rate (so as to defeat pharmacokinetic countermeasures), swift to spread to and affect new organisms. Optimal employment would be covert seeding, rather than overt bombardment, which could be interdicted at two points: pre-impact intercept and post-impact zone containment or sterilization. Lastly, the organism could be designed to completely die-off after exhausting all avai
lable nutrients, leaving a thoroughly sterilized world.

  ADVANTAGES:

  • High selectivity and scalability: geneered organisms can be narrow or wide spectrum in their effects upon indigenous biota;

  • Most resources, and select elements of the biosphere, remain intact.

  DISADVANTAGES:

  • Considerable advance preparation required (collection of indigenous biotas, gene-equivalency identification, fabrication of aggressor organism, lab testing, operational observation).

  Other, less likely methodologies include…

  And so, his proposal had unfolded, pursuing dreadful and diverse nightmares of apocalypse down every per mutative path. He had imagined weapons as theoretical as a quantum-based device that would function as a “gravity bomb” --devastating either to a planet’s tectonic plates or to the immediate substrata of a star’s photosphere. He had even advanced the admittedly bizarre concept of a “time bomb.”

  The sheaf of papers sagged in his hand; if only he could change the flow of time, how different things might have been. Or would they? Knowing what he now knew, would he have done anything different? And would-—could—-the Academic Review Board have heard him any differently than they had? The Great Renunciation had remade the world, ended the strife between nations, eliminated famine, created an unparalleled equity of wealth and opportunity. Instead of embarking on a quest to find new biospheres, all attention had focused on preserving the blue and green globe that everyone called ‘home.’ In a world where violence had at last become not merely wicked but vulgar, in which weapons were forgotten implements of a barbaric age, his inquiry had had no place. It was the clangor of a sword upon a shield in an age where cultural harmony depended upon the all-pervasive music of the pipes. And he had been foolish—-or perhaps just “young” -—enough to think that science (or rather, scientists) were living embodiments of the objectivity they preached and taught and swore to uphold. He never did understand how the Renunciation of violence as a behavior necessitated its repudiation as a subject of investigation, any more than he ever understood the complex rhetorical figurations which-—so his mentors claimed-—provided objective proofs of the pointlessness of violence in all its forms, in all situations. He had wanted to behold that Transcendent Truth, that touchstone of the Great Renunciation, but his intellect remained innocently intransigent. All his mentors could offer were expressions of sympathy (but no empathy, since they were not so cognitively benighted), and the consoling assurances of a future as a government functionary in a world where no one starved, no one knew pain, and no one who had failed so miserably as he had would ever reproduce. It was all for The Best, they had assured him; it was his part to play in the continuing achievement that was the Great Renunciation.

  That standard of golden wisdom remained absolute and untarnished until, thirty-six years later, the first starships appeared at the edges of the heliopause. Evidently, interstellar space was not wholly devoid of other intelligences, after all. And evidently, not all these races were as committed to a policy of peaceful non-expansion. The creatures debarked, more strange than horrible to Dan's tolerant eyes. They professed good will, which they attributed in large part to their worship of an all-loving deity. But they also expected cooperation, and ultimately, willing cooption into their expanding interstellar sphere of influence. The many nations of the globe met to consider this offer (which daily seemed more akin to an ultimatum) but, in the end, that international council felt ethically compelled to decline membership. The loose articles of confederation put forth by the newcomers contained explicit contingencies for war-making, suppression of insurgency, and the imposition of martial law. It was of little or no consequence that the aliens (who now seemed more like intruders or even usurpers) were informed of this decision in the politest and apologetic of terms; they perceived it as a rebuff. With few words (none friendly, and few enough civil) they returned to their craft. So departed the intruders.

  Who, one year later, returned as subtle, indeed undeclared, invaders. As Dan had predicted in his long-gone youth, they had found the option of a tailored biocidal microorganism the most appealing. During their first visit, they had had ample opportunities to collect a wide range of samples: evidently, even as they had spoken of brotherhood, peace, and mutuality, they had also been preparing for a one-sided war of extermination. But, upon the occasion of their second visit, their former invocations of a supreme deity of peace (in whose image they predictably asserted themselves to have been made) mysteriously transmogrified into something far more ominous. It was now a creed of duty to a higher purpose, of a manifest destiny, of a (regrettably) militant responsibility to bring their notions of peace and tranquility to the rest of the universe—-even if they had to kill every other sophont in that universe to achieve it.

  Dan held the paper up to eyes that refused to focus as quickly or as surely as they had just a moment ago; he resisted a subtle but sudden rise of utterly pervasive pain—

  --Or was that the forbidden emotion of anger, maybe even . . . homicidal rage? And why did it feel so right, so just, so like an awakening rather than a descent into troglodytism ? And after all, it wasn’t he who had behaved like a troglodyte.

  For as Dan had predicted, even as the invaders stepped down from their returned ships, offering stonily blank faces and almost diffidently issued ultimatums, they had surreptitiously seeded a timed-release version of the blight that, days after their departure, erupted into what became universally known as the Rot--which had, in the time that Dan had watched, moved half of the distance from its first position as a brown line at the edge of the green fields. As if to witness a final, fearsome act in a tragedy, the second moon was now peeking timidly over the horizon: too horrified to look full upon the scene, but also too compelled to look away.

  The Rot---misnamed, for it was more akin to accelerated bacterial reduction—-was already here, in his room, although Dan could not yet see it. But the door’s plastic frame had started to warp; a bad sign. Plastic took longer than wood or animal tissue, but ultimately, its origins in organic molecules condemned it to the same fate as all flesh. Not long, now.

  Dan felt his anterior heart flutter, followed by the predictable consequent weakness in the complex muscle junctures necessitated by his equally complex radially hexapedal physiology. He sagged, but pursued his final question with a final, fleet-footed yet fleeting thought: who were the troglodytes?

  His race, which had foresworn weapons, war, and violence in all its direct and indirect manifestations? Or this pestilential species of duplicitous bipeds who had been patchy-furred apes only a few hundred thousand years ago, and whose ventures into space were not yet four centuries old?

  But he who had been spawned as Dan'ytk Kr!k could no longer distinguish the searing pain of the Rot from the burning irony of its conquest. As the edges of the paper began discorporating in his wavering grasp, and his sight began to fail, he saw one last time his failing grade, and the note that had been scrawled beneath it in the tongue-painted quatrefoil sigils of the argot of the Academicians' Caste:

  Sadly, the motivation and reasoning behind this project is not merely dysfunctional, but wholly recidivistic. The devolution it implies in its author regrettably compels us to conclude that you are not suitable for further advancement, nor for inclusion in the breeding pool.

  With regrets,

  Hzuult’yk Ktraa, Academician

  Caste-Patriarch, Primus-ultra-Pares

  Dan felt the papers fall from his palsied hands. Thirty-seven years ago, the Academicians decreed that “Dan” had failed as completely and ignominiously as was possible for his race.

  And now, so had they.

  - THE END -

  About Charles E. Gannon

  Dr. Charles E. Gannon is a Distinguished Professor of English (St. Bonaventure University) and was a Fulbright Senior Specialist in American Literature & Culture from 2004-2009.

  Dr. Gannon's series include hard-sf interstellar epic (the Caine
Riordan series, set in his Terran Republic universe, nominated for three Nebulas, two Dragons, and winner of the Compton Crook Award) and epic slipstream fantasy (the forthcoming Broken World series). He also collaborates with Eric Flint in that author's New York Times Best Selling series "Ring of Fire series" as well as with Steve White in the NYT Bestselling "Starfire" series. He has also worked in universes/shared worlds such as War World, Man-Kzin Wars, the Honorverse, etc.) and in various anthologies and Analog SF Magazine. You can visit and learn more about his various SF universes and projects—past, present, and future—at: www.charlesegannon.com.

  Along with about fifty other SF writers (such as Larry Niven, Ben Bova, John Hemry/Jack Armstrong, and Greg Bear), he is a member of SIGMA, the "SF think-tank" which advises intelligence and defense agencies (cf. www.sigmaforum.org). In his role as a subject matter expert on advanced military/defense/intel concepts, he has been featured on the Discovery Channel, NPR, Fox, and a wide variety of other national media outlets.